


10 Signs You've Become a Crazy Cat Lady

by saltyplaydough



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M, POV Alternating, POV Animal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 23:10:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20299477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltyplaydough/pseuds/saltyplaydough
Summary: A cat finds Robert





	10 Signs You've Become a Crazy Cat Lady

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Illgetmerope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Illgetmerope/gifts).

She slinks into the tight space in-between the coloured bins, praying she’s moved fast enough for The Children to have missed her. She feels the weight of their footsteps getting closer, rubber souls thumping down on hot asphalt, uncoordinated, and it makes her ears twitch in tense response. Her heart pounds quick against her ribs. Her breathing shallows.

“Did you see where it went? KITTY!”

She jumps at the shout, body hitting the side of a bin, but the children don’t notice. The thumps get louder and her body grows warmer, half from anxiety and half from the heat rising off the ground. She waits. If they get any closer, she’ll have to run again, and she’s getting sick of it. All she’s done these past days, it feels like, is run. From handsy children, from the tomcat in the carpark, from that crow that’d swooped down _way_ too close for comfort when she was trying to find a quiet spot to scoff down the small mouse she’d managed to hunt down. 

And the large man. The one with the furry chin who’d tried to put her in the wire cage. She’d run from him for so long, too scared to stop and look back.

She hasn’t had a moment of pause since that man, and she’s _tired_. 

So she waits. 

She waits, until The Children leave, tired from the heat and frustrated by their failed hunt. And then she waits some more, because she doesn’t know where to go from here. She’s spent days running from everything, and she doesn’t have a place to run _to_. Not anymore. 

So she settles into the space in-between the coloured bins that’s started to cool now that the sun is going down. She’s tired after all, and a little nap while she waits can’t hurt.

:::

She snaps back awake and the sky is black. It’s the shouting that’s woken her up, two men yelling and posturing and so close to shoving, she can see it. She’s seen this in territorial cats, seen the way they jump and bite and scream, and she knows she needs a new waiting place.

She runs again. Run, runs, runs, over grass, up sidewalks, until she spots the slowly closing door to an apartment building. It looks so familiar, and she _wants it to be_. Wants to go home even if it’s not hers anymore now that Mama’s not there. The shrinking opening of the door makes her decision for her. 

She runs in. 

And then she stops.

No, it’s all wrong. The smell is _all wrong_, and the ground too rough and she has a moment of loss again, until she hears someone scream. She turns, but the door’s already shut, and The One Who Screamed is staring at her, eyes wide and nose scrunched. She recognises that look in humans. Bad things can happen when they look at you like that. She turns and runs up the stairs until she sees another door, opening this time, and runs through again.

:::

Robert rushes to close the door, though it’s too late. A giant rat’s just run into the apartment, and now he’s got _a giant rat in the apartment_. 

He grew up on a farm; the occasional rodent shouldn’t be such an alarming thought to him. But that was a long time ago and farm rats aren’t quite the same as city rats, are they? And this one’s about the size of his foot, from the glimpse he caught before it’d run off into the bedroom.

He considers his options, a way to prolong the inevitable, more than anything. Between the language barrier and the total aversion to neighbourliness, there is no one here he can ask for help. No one who will even answer the door if he knocks. 

Usually, that’s just how Robert likes it. He can’t answer questions if no one can understand him, and no one here has any interest in those answers anyway. Not when they were running from questions themselves. But right now, he misses having someone, even if just to share in this ridiculousness with him. A memory of exasperated blue eyes sneaks in, and he abruptly turns away from it and towards the bedroom. 

If there’s one thing Robert is good at, it’s running from himself. He hadn’t had to, for a while there. _Himself_ hadn’t seemed as terrifying a concept when he had Aaron and Liv and Seb to share it with. His family. His own. Now though, he’s back to running, getting good at slipping away from memories that threaten to bring with them a sweeping sense of guilt. The kind that makes him wake up in cold sweat. 

It makes him wonder what it means that he can slip back into this place so easily, the one where he avoids looking his reflection in the eye and shamefully skids his gaze over the corner of the room where he’s arranged the few mementos he’s kept of his past life: the first shoes he bought Seb, the black hoodie Aaron had worn the day before Robert’d left, and an early draft of Liv’s wedding speech that Robert had found peeking out from under the sofa after coming back from their honeymoon. 

(On his darkest days, it makes him wonder if it’d all been a sham. If he was never actually meant for normal.)

He stops outside the room, turns the light on, and takes a cautious step in when he doesn’t immediately spot the rat.

The room is sparsely furnished, just a dresser next to the window and a rickety, metal-framed bed against a wall. It doesn’t leave many options for a good, giant rat-sized hiding spot. He looks under the bed from where he’s standing. Nothing. Which means it’s behind the door. He takes a breath, and another one. He can do this. He’s not losing to a rat. He peers around the edge of the door, slowly, not wanting to alarm the animal into running straight at him. 

Round, reflective eyes peer back. Not ones belonging to a rat. Well, that’s something at least. A fairly small-sized cat isn’t as intimidating as a giant rat. Feeling more confident, he walks fully into the room and inches the door away from the wall. 

It looks so little, crouched close to the ground like that, staring up at his hands with dilated pupils and ears flat against its head. The cat — black, except for a spot of white on its chin and one of its paws — shifts back against the wall, desperate to put more space between them.

“Here, come on. Out,” He says, gentle but just a touch firm, hoping the tone he used on Seb and Liv will do enough to communicate his authority. 

He jumps back at the force of the resulting hiss, and feels embarrassed at his own skittishness around such a small, clearly terrified animal. Robert reaches a hand out towards it, slowly, giving it the chance to get used to his presence. 

:::

She sees the giant hand coming down towards her, fear striking in her heart, and she’s sick of it all. She’s _sick_ of running. She launches herself forward, teeth bared, snarling, and hooks her claws into pink flesh. Tall Man yells out, falling back on his bum to get away from her. It fills her with pride that he has to shake her off.

“What’s _wrong_ with you, ya little–!” 

Oh, he’s angry now. She slinks back towards the wall, wide eyes staring up at him. He watches her, something in him softening as his face loses its severity. 

“I get it, you know.”

She doubts it.

“Must be scary, being on your own,” he says, so quiet. It makes her ears perk up just a little, fear taking a back seat to curiosity for a second.

He watches her some more, before getting back off the ground. 

“Right. Wait here.”

As if.

She waits for him to leave the room, then runs over to the dresser, hops onto it, and tries to sneak out through the window. Except the bars on the grill are too narrow for her to fit through. 

Well, shit. 

She turns back towards the room. Tall Man was probably off to call Wire Cage Man. And then she will be carted off in the back of the van to the place cats are brought to when they lose their Mamas. 

She looks at the bed. Mama had a bed too. She’d let her sleep on it, curled around her cold feet, even though she had her own smaller bed on the floor. 

Suddenly she’s tired again. She doesn’t know if this mysterious place has beds, so she jumps off the dresser, deciding to take advantage of this one. 

:::

“That’s my bed, you know.”

She’d been too nervous to nap, wondering what was taking Tall Man so long, and had stayed watching the door the entire time he was gone. She watches him step into the room now, a small bowl in hand. Was Wire Cage Man not here yet?

“If you’re staying, — _just until I figure out what to do with you_ — there will have to be rules.”

She knows what’s in the bowl. Can smell it from here. But can she trust it? 

“No getting on my bed.”

Wait. What? Staying?

“Definitely no scratching.”

She’ll be the judge of that, thanks.

“Now. I bought you some cat food. Hope you like chicken and carrots.”

He places the bowl down next to the door, and stares at her. She stares back. He rolls his eyes. 

“Fine. I’ll leave you to it, then.”

She waits until she hears the quiet snick of the door closing, waits a little longer just in case, and then slinks over to the bowl, ears tipped towards the door the whole time. She hasn’t had chicken in a week. She _loves_ chicken. 

:::

Robert checks back in two hours later, having returned from his ‘So You (Temporarily) Have A Feline Roommate’ shopping trip. He’d bought three different cans of food from the shop downstairs earlier (in case the cat was picky), but he knew he’d need a couple more supplies from an actual pet store, if only to avoid any unwanted toilet accidents. Now that he’s back and the litter box has been set up, he walks over to the bedroom and carefully opens the door. 

The bowl was completely cleared off any food, but there were little bits of chicken on the floor around it. A messy eater, then. 

He looks up at the bed. There, right in the middle, lay a small dark form, curled into a tight ball. He wants to take a picture and send it to Aaron. Wants to share in Seb’s excited little squeal as he watches its paw twitch in its sleep. Knows Liv will ask if they can keep the cat, _please Robert,_ as Aaron laughs at him like he already knows the answer. 

He feels something inside him break at not being able to do any of this with his family. But he feels his heart sigh too, at being allowed to finally think of them like this. 

He perches himself on the edge of the bed as the cat wakes up and blinks at him. 

“What did I say about the bed?”

The cat blinks again.

He tries reaching out. This time, he waits as the cat stares his hand down for a few seconds, hyper-alert, before relenting and laying its head back down. He takes that as permission to stroke a finger down between its eyes. 

It doesn’t react. 

That’s a good sign, isn’t it? 

He moves the finger back up to the soft spot behind the cat’s ears. He starts to scratch, but almost stops in shock as the cat unfurls in front of him, stretching its arms out and turning its head back so its chin points up towards him. 

Robert snorts. _Finally._

“I’m not keeping you, you know.”

The cat shamelessly pushes its head up against his hand.

It brings up another memory, one he first pushes away on instinct, before allowing back in.

“You remind me of someone,” he tests it out. He hasn’t talked about Aaron since he’d left (not that he has anyone who would care to listen), and Robert feels like what they have– what they _had_ was so big, so unparalleled, so _precious,_ that he can’t allow it to exist in _this_ life. But even that feels like a betrayal of sorts now. What if he pushes and pushes at the memories until they leave him for good?

“Aaron, he–” he stops and starts, words stilted, unpracticed. “You meet him and you think he’s a grump down to his bones, with his mardy face, always yelling at everyone.” He slips into a helpless smile, even as his chin wobbles and his voice cracks open a little at the end. “But he’s a marshmallow, really.” 

It’s a relief, talking about him like that, but it’s edging on too much now. He’s not ready yet to find out what will happen when he unleashes all of Aaron onto this makeshift life of his.

He looks back down at the cat to see it’s fallen back asleep, blissed out on head scratches. 

He smirks. _Just_ like him.

:::

Tall Man keeps saying she can only stay “for a bit, till I figure out how to get rid of you,” but she’s seen him stock the kitchen cabinet with more cat food, and he brought home a rubber ball last night. She knows a lost cause when she sees one.

Apparently, he is having some difficulty finding a no-kill shelter nearby that isn’t already at full capacity. She has no idea what any of that means, but she dutifully listens because Tall Man is also Provider Of Food. 

She hops off the lone chair at the dining table when she hears keys jingle at the front door. She slips between his feet as he walks through the door, rubbing up against his calves and meowing up at him.

“Ff–! Oi! Who’s going to find you a home if I crack my head open, tripping over you?”

Tall Man is also An Idiot.

She flops over on the floor and waits. He steps out of his shoes, and rubs a socked foot down her back as she stretches against the floor. He walks away just as it starts to get good.

“I’ve put up some flyers in the surrounding buildings. Hopefully, someone either recognises you or wants to adopt you.”

They were back to that then. She sulks, walks over to the chair and hops back on, warily observing him read something off his phone. He’s been reading up on cat care — in addition to looking up shelters — and just two days ago, had come up behind her, held her tail up, and stared at her butt, muttering “colon for a boy, semicolon for a girl” to himself. She shudders just thinking about it. 

Tall Man goes to wash her food bowl, complaining about the mess she’s made around it.

“You’re worse than my toddler, you are.”

He talks about his family sometimes. He didn’t really, at the beginning, but it’s happening more often now. He still sounds all choked up when he does, like his voice has forgotten how to work around their names, but he seems determined to get better at it, she thinks. There are moments, though, if he goes on for a little too long about them, where he’ll stop suddenly, looking lost. When that happens, he gets so quiet. Won’t even nag about her tracking litter around. 

She doesn’t know what happened, why he can’t see them, but she now knows about his son, who is “objectively better than other babies I’ve met”, his two little sisters who gave him so much grief, and his Aaron. 

She’d been half asleep the first time he’d mentioned him, but she remembers. She reminded him of this– this _Aaron_, he’d said. 

Well obviously this was his old cat. And not a very good one, given how saying his name alone could bring him close to tears. He'll say his name tentatively, quietly, like he’s afraid someone will hear it and take it away from him. And then he’ll go quiet for hours after that. Returning with that haunted, lost look.

She doesn’t much like Aaron. She especially doesn’t like that Tall Man has decided to call her Erin. She thinks this is his way of using his name without actually having to say it, and she hates it. _Hates_ being named after some other weirdo cat, one who’s _~soooo perfect~,_ apparently, but still makes her Tall Man cry, and she’s _never_ going to answer to it. 

:::

“Erin?”

No.

“Erin.”

_No._

“…Erin, I’ll let you sleep on the bed.”

Fuck’s sake, she hates her life.

She walks into the bedroom, head high, and jumps up onto the bed. Tall Man is laid out on his back, wearing a black hoodie, and looking quite pathetic. 

“The room felt too big.” He smoothes a hand over her head. 

Ah. It’s one of those days. She cuddles up to his side, half on his arm, and waits.

“I just miss him. I miss him so much I feel like i’ll burst from it if I breathe in too deep.” He rubs a finger between her eyes, just like he did that first day. “I thought I’d get to keep it, you now? All of it. I thought it was mine.”

His voice is starting to take on that broken quality, and she noses against his chin. 

“He’s going to hate me for it. And he should. It’ll be better for him if he does, really. But I can’t bear the thought. Not _him._”

She can only rub her cheek hard against his chin and whine at the uneven sobs she can feel him bury into her forehead. She may not like Aaron much, but she wants to tell him that he probably doesn’t hate him. Aaron might feel suddenly too small in a too large world built for The Humans, the way she still feels when she remembers screaming for Mama from the back of a van and knowing she couldn’t hear her anymore. And yes, that might make him angry at Tall Man. _So_ angry. But hate? 

She thinks about her afternoons spent watching Mama work from her cat tree, easily accepting the kisses she would press onto her forehead anytime she passed by. And then she thinks about the way Tall Man scratches the base of her tail every time she jumps up onto the kitchen countertop, even as he complains about her germs getting everywhere. 

Aaron won’t hate him. Cats aren’t built like that, she wants to tell him.

She only realises she’s started kneading his chest when she feels herself shift from the weak laugh rumbling under her.

“You’re a sweetheart, aren’t you?”

She sinks a claw in through the hoodie. A clear warning. He laughs again. 

:::

“No,” she hears him say into the phone, long and deliberate, almost spelling out the word. She doesn’t know why he won’t just learn the language. It’s really not that hard. “No cat. No. Bye.” With that, he hangs up and goes to sweep up the litter she’s tracked all over the living room, pausing just long enough on his way, to smack a kiss onto her forehead.

He’s finally caught on, then.

She starts licking her butt, content.

“Erin.”

She looks up. 

He looks back at her, a small, wistful smile etched on. “Aaron would love you.”

She counts to ten, takes _deep_ breaths in and out, and decides she will have to ignore that for his own good. She goes back to her butt.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think! You can also find me on tumblr at [spamela-hamderson](https://spamela-hamderson.tumblr.com/)


End file.
